Scotty Green's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Scotty Green waded into the flooded market square, water past his knees, hunting for the crate of tools he meant to build his free workshop with. He wanted one place in Forgotten Hollow where every broken thing and every broken person could be mended. But his supplies sat trapped behind a collapsed heap of ruined machinery, and the burst pipe kept pumping more water by the minute. He pushed his hat straight on his head, then turned it backward again out of habit. The chain around his neck dripped. His baggy jeans clung to his legs. He grabbed a bent iron strut and pulled. It didn't move. The machinery had folded into a tangle no single man could clear. "You're going to drown before you lift that." Amanda stood at the water's edge in her cowboy boots, already soaked to the ankles. His wife crossed her arms, maroon glasses sliding down her nose. She'd warned the town council the pipes were rusting through. They'd ignored her. She wasn't saying it now, but Scotty saw it in the set of her jaw. "I told them," she said anyway. "Now help me help you." She splashed over and dropped a cloth bundle onto a dry barrel. Inside lay his small mechanical dog, white fur and brass gears, a clock set in its chest. Scotty had built it to crawl where people couldn't. "Send the pup under," Amanda said. "Find what's holding the pile." Scotty wound the key behind its ear. The little dog's gears ticked to life. It paddled into the brown water, pointed ears flat, and dove under the machinery. Through a gap Scotty watched its clock-light glow. It nosed along the base of the heap, then stopped and scratched at one buried beam. "That's the keystone," Scotty said. "Pull that, the whole pile shifts." He looped a chain around the beam the pup had marked. Amanda found a second chain and anchored it to the broken strut. They braced their boots against a sunken cart and pulled together. The beam groaned. The machinery shuddered. Then the whole tangle slid sideways and crashed down, loud enough to echo off the shops. Water surged past Scotty's chest and pulled back. His crate floated free in the gap. Scotty grabbed it, laughing, and dragged it to dry stone. His tools were safe. But the pup's gears had choked on mud mid-dive, and now it drifted limp on the surface. Amanda scooped it up and cradled it. "The market's ruined," she said quietly. "Whole square's underwater. You can't build your workshop here now." Scotty looked at the flooded square, then at the dead little dog in her hands. He had his tools. He had nowhere to put them. "Then I need somewhere dry," he said. "Somewhere high. And I need to fix him first."